The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been opposing A.B. 1366, legislation by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, which would renew a law that effectively shields a huge part of the telecommunications industry from state and local regulation. Comcast and AT&T law backed this law, Public Utilities Code Sec. 710, in...

Despite its name, Sen. Josh Hawley’s Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act (PDF) would make the Internet less safe for free expression, not more. It would violate the First Amendment by allowing a government agency to strip platforms of legal protection based on their decisions to host or remove...

Massachusetts has a long history of standing up for liberty. Right now, it has the opportunity to become a national leader in fighting invasive government surveillance. Lawmakers need to hear from the people of Massachusetts to say they oppose government use of face surveillance. Face surveillance poses a threat to...

The NSA has used Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act to justify collecting and storing millions of Americans’ online communications. Now, the House of Representatives has a chance to pull the plug on funding for Section 702 unless the government agrees to limit the reach of that program...

Certbot has a brand new website! Today we’ve launched a major update that will help Certbot’s users get started even more quickly and easily. Certbot is a free, open source software tool for enabling HTTPS on manually-administered websites, by automatically deploying Let’s Encrypt certificates. Since we introduced it in...

Strong privacy legislation in the United States is possible, necessary, and long overdue. EFF emphasizes the following concrete recommendations for proposed legislation regarding consumer data privacy. Three Top Priorities First, we outline three of our biggest priorities: avoiding federal preemption, ensuring consumers have a private right of action, and using...

Under the bipartisan Protecting Data at the Border Act, border officers would be required to get a warrant before searching a traveler’s electronic device. Last month, the bill was re-introduced into the U.S. Senate by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). It is co-sponsored by...

It should be clear now that messing around with Section 101 of the Patent Act is a bad idea. A Senate subcommittee has just finished hearing testimony about a bill that would wreak havoc on the patent system. Dozens of witnesses have testified, including EFF Staff Attorney Alex Moss...

For decades, journalists, activists and lawyers who work on human rights issues around the world have been harassed, and even detained, by repressive and authoritarian regimes seeking to halt any assistance they provide to human rights defenders. Digital communication technology and privacy-protective tools like end-to-end encryption have made this work...

Stupid Patent of the Month For years, the Eastern District of Texas (EDTX) has been a magnet for lawsuits filed by patent trolls—companies who make money with patent threats, rather than selling products or services. Technology companies large and small were sued in EDTX every week. We’ve written about how...

EFF is proud to announce our newest member of our already star-studded advisory board: Michael R. Nelson. Michael has worked on Internet-related global public policy issues for more than 30 years, including working on technology policy in the U.S. Senate and the Clinton White House. Michael’s broad expertise in...

EFF has joined a coalition of civil rights and civil liberties organizations to support a California bill that would prohibit law enforcement from applying face recognition and other biometric surveillance technologies to footage collected by body-worn cameras. About five years ago, body cameras began to flood into police and sheriff...

If you rely on shared biked or scooters, your location privacy is at risk. Cities across the United States are currently pushing companies that operate shared mobility services like Jump, Lime, and Bird to share individual trip data for any and all trips taken within their boundaries, including where and...

EFF and Open Rights Group today submitted formal comments to the British Treasury, urging restraint in applying anti-money-laundering regulations to the publication of open-source software. The UK government sought public feedback on proposals to update its financial regulations pertaining to money laundering and terrorism in alignment with a larger European...